Recently with the increase in groceries, people have been looking for ways to cut back and save. Obviously you cannot cut groceries out of your life completely, so you need to find other ways to keep the cost down.
According to Good Housekeeping, the typical American family of four costs about $5 per person for dinner each night. That makes dinner about $20 per night, averaging around $140 a week just for dinner!
There are some simple ways to save on your groceries. Everyone has different things that work for them, here are a few things that have definitely helped me save.
Make a List – Plan your meals for the whole week and make a list of things you definitely need before you head out to the grocery store. This will help you not make impulse purchases. I also find it much harder to go to the grocery store when I am hungry…that is when I buy the most items that I do not need. Make sure to eat something before you leave to suppress that urge to buy! If possible another thing to do is to leave your kids at home. Kids always find items at the grocery store that they want and will bug you until you say yes. Not having them there will relieve some of the stress.
Make Fewer Trips – You will not only save on impulse purchases this way, but you will also be saving on gas. When you make your list, buy items for the whole week. This way you will be making less trips to the grocery store that are unnecessary. Obviously this won’t always work out but it will save you on both gas and time.
Buy Generic Brands – I have just recently accepted the idea of generic brands. Being a marketing major I seem to always fall for the brand name items. The truth is however, that many of the store brand products are very similar if not exactly the same to the brand name items. This can save you a great deal of money. There are still some items that you cannot find a generic replacement for, but for the ones that you can you should give it a try.
Only Buy 1, Unless You Need More – I get caught up in this a lot. For the signs that say 2 for $5 you can often times just buy one and it will still only cost you $2.50. This is not always the case, but I have found that more often than not it is. Once in college we bought 10 boxes of bagel bites for $10 just to find out they would have been $1 anyway! We definitely learned our lesson when we got sick of bagel bites fast.
Store Cards – Make sure you get a savings card for the grocery stores that you shop at the most. They are free and almost always save you money! I can never understand the people that don’t want to open a card just because they don’t want to fill out the paperwork. In the long-run you will definitely save a lot of money. You can even see your savings at the bottom of your receipt.
Choose Food Wisely – Things like the rotisserie chickens that they sell at the grocery store are extremely convenient, but they can be fairly expensive. If you have the time to cook for your family, cooking a chicken of the same size can save you about $5 and only take about an hour to make. Usually the pre-cooked food is extremely expensive compared to if you cooked it yourself. Although sometimes these can be convenient and quick, it is not always the best price.
Everyone has their own ways of saving but now is definitely the time to make sure you are making the most of it. Although coupons are great, they will only go so far and you should find other ways that you can save to keep your grocery bills down. Everyone wants to cut back as much as possible right now, find which ways work best for you!
Photo Courtesy of Álvaro Daniel González Lamarque
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